One sports career is in disheartening decline. The other is in exhilarating ascendance. Born in different centuries, Tiger Woods and Caitlin Clark are going in opposite directions.
Yet, while one is 26 years older than the other, they do have much in common.
How often over the past year and a half, since Clark’s rise to her immense popularity, has the rush to buy tickets to see her or national obsession to watch her on TV reminded us of someone else? And when we thought about it, and landed on who that someone might be, wasn’t it Tiger?
Woods, 48, brought millions of new fans to the game of golf. Clark, 22, is bringing millions of new fans to women’s basketball. In both cases, most of these fans never watched or cared about the sport before Woods or Clark arrived. Grandmothers who didn’t like golf started planning their Sundays around Woods’ final-round tee time. Grandfathers who usually scoffed at women’s sports began arranging their afternoons or evenings around tipoff of Clark’s Iowa or Indiana Fever games.
Quickly the masses realized these weren’t just terrific athletes, they were entertainers daring to pull off breathtaking shots (and in Clark’s case, breathtaking passes) that no one else in their sport could. And they were doing it in a way that particularly appealed to the newcomer to the sport: often set apart from the other athletes, appearing on the TV screen alone, so visually approachable.
Tiger Woods on the 10th hole during the first round of the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club. (Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports)
The parallels don’t end there. While a good portion of the nation was falling in love with them, they both had their doubters: peers and pundits who couldn’t believe someone so young could rise to the top of their sport so quickly, make the leap from the amateur or college world to the professional ranks and succeed almost immediately.
Two-time U.S. Open champion and longtime golf commentator Curtis Strange was interviewing the 20-year-old Woods, playing as a professional for the first time in Milwaukee in August 1996, when Woods said he wanted “a victory” in his first pro tournament.
Strange smiled. “You’ll learn.”
In less than two months, Woods won his first PGA Tour event in Las Vegas. In April 1997, at 21, he won the Masters, the first of his 15 major titles.
“I said what the world was thinking at the time,” Strange said in a phone interview the other day. “I have to laugh now….
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